Page 21 of The Last Dance You Saved
Jim Steele’s face appeared on my phone’s screen. Thank God I had at least one person I could trust with both my life and my business.
“Have you left already?” Steele asked when I answered.
“Just heading to the elevators. What’s up?”
“Can you stop by the control room on your way out?”
“I’ll be right there.” I hoped it didn’t have anything to do with the manager and florist I’d had him walk out the door.
Fallon rolled her eyes at the detour but didn’t comment.
Last night had been the first good evening we’d had together in more months than I could count. Even before Spence had died, things had grown strained between us. My daughter despised leaving the ranch every time she’d had to come see me and had started questioning all my reasons for not visiting her in Rivers.
But watching the ridiculous show, we’d been able to leave all that behind us. She’d laughed and screamed at the characters, and I’d teased and taunted her about the ridiculousness of the relationships and the impossibility of Buffy’s powers. We’d followed dinner up with a fraisier cake I’d had sent up from my five-star restaurant simply because the strawberry sponge cake layered with pastry cream and topped with marzipan had always been one of Fallon’s favorites.
Slowly, some of the tension had left her shoulders, and I’d marked it down as a win.
But when I’d walked back into the suite this afternoon after dealing with the hotel manager, she’d been pacing the living area with all the weight of the world having landed back on her. I wanted to tell her this was exactly the reason I was selling the ranch. She was too young to have it hanging on her already. I didn’t want my daughter to limit herself, thinking she had to step into Spence’s and Lauren’s shoes to continue a heritage that was wrought with as much ugly as good. The estate had been founded in drama and turmoil from the moment our great-grandfather had won the ranch from Adam and Lauren’s great-granddaddy in a poker match. Thousands of acres had become ours with the flip of a card.
And when the diamonds had been found and mined, turning our family into one of the wealthiest in California at the time, the Hurly family had all but declared war. They’d gone to court, fighting over whether the mineral rights had transferred along with the land in that godforsaken poker game. They’d lost that battle, and Tommy Hurly had shot himself, leaving his son to find him in the cabin he’d taken over after refusing to leave the property. In what I’m sure Great-grandpa Alasdair saw as a grand gesture, he’d carved out an acre right around the cabin, right in the middle of our property, to give to the widow and her children. Not enough to survive on. Not enough to find any of the diamonds studding the hills. But enough to call home without having to pay anything more than the property tax.
After that, Hurly’s widow and their children had come to work on the ranch, and from that moment forward, there had always been a Harrington and a Hurly working on the land, side by side, twined in some sick, symbiotic relationship. One Spence and I had only added to by fighting over Lauren’s hand.
Fallon would never see the truth, but selling the ranch might just rid us of the curses that had haunted our families from the very beginning. Maybe we could actually put it all behind us. Maybe we’d get a fresh start.
Maybe you just don’t want to see the good that’s still there, my devil taunted.
As the elevator doors opened in the basement of the hotel, I shoved that thought aside and strode down the hallway to the control room outfitted with top-of-the-line computers and equipment that allowed the security team to watch thousands of cameras around the casino. Whenever I was in Vegas, Steele made the control room his office, keeping an eye not only on the security here but the security of all my businesses around the world.
A decade older than me, Steele was a broad-shouldered, dark-haired former Navy SEAL with eyes the same color as his last name. He’d left the military due to a colossal fuckup by some bureaucrats that had cost him several members of his team and spent five years in private security before winding up running security for a casino near the alley where I’d been stabbed. He’d saved my life that night, running off the three individuals who’d attacked me.
I pointed Fallon to a chair near the front doors of the control room, far away from the cameras and activity. “Have a seat. I’ll just be a minute.”
She huffed but immediately took her phone out of her pocket and started scrolling. Maybe I should have confiscated it as part of her grounding, but I hadn’t had the heart. She’d had enough loss this year. I couldn’t take away the conversations she had with her friends on top of it.
I made my way through the desks to where Steele sat at a long row of monitors hanging from the back wall. He was typing away at a keyboard, which seemed to be his favorite spot these days.
“Steele,” I said.
He glanced up, pushed a few buttons, and the five monitors right above him flickered from their current views into Puzo’s ugly mug. Between the different screens, they showed him strolling in through the side door of the casino and making his way calmly to the café. Steele let one of the videos play, and we saw the hostess lead him to the veranda where he waited for Sadie to join him.
Just the sight of her black hair swinging past her chin and those impish blue eyes dancing with life was enough to tighten every inch of my body in inappropriate ways. I could taste her all over again. I hated that I still hungered for what she’d offered before I’d had to send her away. Hated that I’d seen her with Puzo and yet still couldn’t seem to get her out of my head.
Steele hit play on the video of her with Puzo, zipping through it at three-times speed until the moment I showed up at their table. Thankfully, the anger and betrayal I’d felt weren’t evident on the screen. Still, Puzo had known I was upset, and my stomach rolled knowing I’d shown him those cards.
After he left, I had a firsthand look at the only real display of emotion I’d let out. Every ounce of frustration was clear in the way I’d hauled Sadie up against me and held on viciously to her arm. Regret swarmed through me.
“Care to tell me about the dame?” Steele asked.
“Is this what you brought me to see? She’s no one,” I said, careful to keep every emotion locked up and put away. When he raised his brow and flicked a different monitor to show Sadie and me on our way up to my penthouse Sunday night, my eye twitched with annoyance. “I’ll repeat it so you hear it this time. She’s no one.”
“You don’t take ‘no one’ to your suite, Marquess. You’ve never taken anyone but Fallon there. Hell, you don’t even host parties in your home, and yet you took her. And the next day, she’s all cozied up with Puzo? No wonder you were pissed.”
“I’ve already done a background check on her.”
“So have I. Sadie Hatley. Twenty-three. She won the grand prize in your dart competition. I can’t find any links to her and Puzo online, but we both have eyes. We both see them sitting there having a snug little breakfast together.”
It wasn’t anything more than what I’d already thought, and yet every word knifed through me. “I won’t ever see her again. She’s probably already back in Tennessee.”
